New Delhi: Inviting a fresh controversy, yoga guru Baba Ramdev on Wednesday termed politicians sitting in the Parliament as murderers, looters and illiterates.

“Out of the 543 people sitting in the Parliament, 162 have criminal charges on them. They are the representatives of the common man and hence we are entitled to remove such people from the honourable Parliament,” said the yoga guru.

Addressing the media while launching his month-long yatra in Chhattisgarh's Durg on Tuesday, Ramdev said, "They are those people who don't care, don't love the farmers, the labourers or the people of this country.

However, he maintained that there are good people among the Parliamentarians and he respected them. "But there are dacoits, murderers, illiterates among them. We have to save the Parliament. We have to remove corrupt people," Ramdev added.

"They are friends and slaves of money. They are illiterate, dacoits and murderers. They are devils in the form of humans, who we have elected to those posts. They are not worth," Ramdev said.

Earlier, Hazare and his team, especially Arvind Kejriwal, angered the Parliament when they attacked MPs. Kejriwal even called MPs murderers and rapists besides naming 14 Ministers as corrupt and threatened cases against them.

Meanwhile, members of Parliament across party lines stood united in attacking Ramdev for calling politicians corrupt and characterless.

While Samajwadi Party moved a privilege motion against Ramdev in the Lok Sabha, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav termed him as mentally unsound person.

"He is a mental case and frustrated man,” Lalu said.

Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar and several MPs, including senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, did not mince words in condemning the utterances and asked people to show respect to the Parliament.

Speaker Kumar said, "The Constitution is supreme. It has granted a certain position to the Parliament. We all should take care of this first."

Sinha said insult of the Parliament and lawmakers and indeed that of Constitution has become a normal norm now. "And who insults the more is a bigger hero now.

"This is absolutely wrong. Nobody has the authority, no matter how big the individual is, ..... it insults the democratic institutions," he said.

Union Minister Harish Rawat said Ramdev was raising a question mark on the whole democratic set up.

BJP MP Kirti Azad said, "It has come to such a situation that in this country, nowadays anybody can speak anything and get away with it.

"No one seems to be in any control. However, I am surprised that Ramdev made such remarks. I can be termed as criminal too as I had violated Section 144 of CrPC while protesting against power cuts. But I did not expect such remarks from him," he said.

Congress MP Jagadambika Pal said character assassination of the Parliament and Parliamentarians is not acceptable.